The Republic of Ecuador has nominated Kellogg PhD and Dissertation Year Fellow and Notre Dame Law School alumnus Pier Pigozzi ’10 LLM, ’20 JSD to serve on the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.
The commission is affiliated with the Organization of American States and headquartered in Washington, DC. Its members meet several times a year to examine allegations of human rights violations in North America, South America, and the Caribbean.
Pigozzi was born in Quito, Ecuador, and received his LLB from the Pontifical Catholic University of Ecuador in 2006. He worked with refugees at the Ecuadorian Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 2005-2008 and at the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees 2008-2009. He then clerked for the Ecuadorian Constitutional Court in 2009 before coming to Notre Dame to pursue his LL.M. in International Human Rights Law.
He earned his LLM in International Human Rights Law from Notre Dame Law School in 2010, after which he worked for two years as a research associate with the Klau Institute for Civil and Human Rights and as an academic advisor to the Law School’s LLM students. He also taught undergraduate and graduate courses at several universities in Ecuador, Italy, and Hungary.
Pigozzi earned his JSD in 2020, also from Notre Dame Law School. His JSD dissertation focused on the Latin American constitutional tradition. He was also a PhD fellow and Dissertation Year fellow of the Kellogg Institute for International Studies as a JSD student.
Since 2020, he has taught and researched as a member of the law faculty at Finis Terrae University in Santiago, Chile. He is the author of more than a dozen investigative reports and articles on international law, human rights, and comparative constitutional law in Latin America.
Notre Dame Law Professor and Kellogg faculty fellow Paolo Carozza, a former member of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights who served as its president in 2008-2009, was Pigozzi’s faculty advisor during his JSD studies.
“Pier Pigozzi embodies the very best of what Notre Dame has to offer: a keen intellect rigorously formed in the law of human rights; an uncompromising commitment to the equal and inherent dignity of every human being; and a generous spirit of openness and collaboration that is ready to work with everyone, across every kind of divide,” Carozza said. “I applaud the Republic of Ecuador for nominating him, and hope that the General Assembly will have the wisdom to elect him.